Tony Wood: The memoirs of an early Soviet poet, 7 March 2002

“... to meet a storm of criticism. Lenin is alleged to have read the assembled texts, by Sergei Esenin, Anatoly Mariengof, Vadim Shershenevich and Ryurik Ivnev, and to have referred to Mariengof – who wrote the lines about the underclothes – as a ‘sick boy’. Russia was in the midst of civil war, with millions dying ...”